The article “Refuge fragile as a snowflake” written by John Balzar is a reflection of the author’s account of personal experience. My analysis of the work will centralize on Balzar’s descriptive and compare and contrast techniques. I will emphasize how Balzar’s craft makes his article interesting, thought-provoking, and involving at the same time.
The author discloses his personal experience in Alaska’s National Refuge; descriptive epithets are used to underscore the emotions he experienced while he was acting as a wilderness guide. Balzar’s selection of descriptive epithets underlines the extremity of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Consider for example Balzar’s word choice: “wild sounds and voices,” “shocking landscapes,” “epic flatness and coastal plain and onward,” “ugly grizzlies with wild eyes,” “funnel clouds of mosquitoes.” The author wants the reader to feel the wild beauty of the land. Balzar is making an argument through his description. His visualization of the Far North is deliberately epic because he wants to transport the reader along his journey. By painting the landscape with such grandeur, he makes his argument more persuasive rather than if he uses dry facts.
The central problem highlighted by the author is that the House of Representatives passed a vote authorizing drilling oil in Alaska. The author argues that oil drilling will diminish the greatness of the wild landscape. He suggests that the House of Representatives regards the Alaska landscape as a source of income, while he stresses the fragility of this environment. Of his individual exploration, he says, “to enter this land is to intrude.” He compares the wilderness with the snowflake, “it is as fragile as a snowflake.” By contrasting his own vivid depiction of the landscape with the lawmaker’s concerns, he makes the drilling bill seams small and petty. Even worse, he suggests that drilling is an act of murder, saying, “Now the House of Representatives has voted to kill it.”
It is interesting to underline the connection between the sentence “There is nothing like Nothing for imagining everything” and the article’s subtitle “Beholding last of Nothing is so profoundly Humbling”. The author managed to compare nothing with nothing, underlining his experience of being in such a place as Alaska, his feelings, and the inner world of the whole population living there. He strived to stress that one cannot imagine this situation without experiencing it personally; otherwise, he has nothing to imagine. One more idea is dedicated to the House of Representatives; he shows their resistance to the author, who, in accordance with their view, was not aware of the condition of nature in Alaska. The author uses the contrast technique to make the most vivid argument. He states that with the advent of civilization in Alaska, with the drilling of oil wells, and using them as a source of income for America, all the nature will be harmed by the trucks and field engines.
The author of the article uses the technique of contrast to underline the contradiction between, firstly, the House of Representatives, its intentions to disturb nature, and the author himself, as the representative of those people, who had the opportunity to enjoy the wild nature. Secondly, he underlined the contrast between wild nature and the coming civilization. Balzar also admits that if the House of Representatives passes its vote, our future generation will just look at the poorness of nature and not only this. They will hear that jingle of pennies except for the image of nature.
Making the conclusion of the essay it is important to admit that the author contradicts the image of people in present-day situations and image within the feelings in the situation described in the article. The sensibility, the author uses in the descriptive technique, shows the greatness of the wild nature, animals, and vivid images of Pristine Alaska. And at the same time the author compares and contrasts the wild nature of Alaska and with what will happen after the House of Representatives passes the vote.
References
Balzar, John. “Refuge fragile as a snowflake”. Los Angeles Times 2001:1.